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It is clear that Zoostorm are targeting this particular computer towards the budget sector, after all the specifications are basic and the system ships with a very limited bundle. When we look at the very modest £230 asking price however we do feel that Zoostorm will sell many of these units to students and people with restricted income.
The build quality is quite impressive considering the low price of the system. The chassis the company have adopted is a customised OEM design which looks attractive and will handle reasonable abuse over the years.
There are a few quality branded components within, such as the Asus F1A55-M LE motherboard and Western Digital hard drive. Sadly these are accompanied by low quality components such as the ‘Goldkey' branded, naked memory.
The Zoostorm PC would have scored higher however if it wasn't for the dire OEM power supply built into the system. It is the loudest unit we have heard in our labs and the fan doesn't seem to deviate from maximum RPM regardless of load. We would need to replace this before considering the Zoostorm PC for media center duties. Such a shame really.
We don't expect amazing benchmark results from a budget oriented system and the performance will be perfectly suited for surfing the web, office work and viewing online content. It is not ideal for gaming as the integrated graphics processing isn't up to the task. That said, if you want to play games you could consider adding in an AMD discrete graphics card in dual graphics mode for extra power.
We have no faith in this power supply however, so long term we would recommend swapping it out if you were to add a discrete graphics card into the mix.
At a price of around £230 inc. VAT from Ebuyer, we think this Zoostorm Desktop is ideal for people who need a budget computer for basic tasks. The specification is solid for the price and the lack of an operating system is sure to entice a number of budget-focused users.
Critically we don't recommend this system as a budget multimedia PC, due to the high noise emissions and lack of HDMI port. Two major weaknesses we can't overlook.
Pros
- Excellent Value.
- Attractive case.
- Generous specification.
- Good performance.
Cons
- Painfully loud power supply.
- Poor airflow.
- No HDMI or USB3.0 connections.
KitGuru says: An impressive budget offering from Zoostorm, let down by the high level of noise emitted by the power supply.
Quite a let down, not on a performance level, but why use a loud PSU in such an ideal media center system?
wow what a terrible system, why such a high score if the PSU is ultra loud? its ideal for a media center until this is factored in.
its not the psu its the heatsink and fan that runs at 4000rpm to fix that all you have to do is replace the cooler with a silent low profile cooler as some coolers can be very large just dont reuse the thermal compound and be sure to clean all the old off
Hi blaze dragon, it’s definitely the PSU in my review unit that makes the noise as I turned the CPU fan off for a moment and the noise was still present.
I bought one of this zoostorm pc from http://www.rossdigital.co.uk and i found it really good performance. I think they are better than HP and cheaper.
CPU’s don’t make any sound as it is attached to the motherboard what you all be hearing is the fan on the CPU but all these very rarely make a noise. What you will be hearing is the noise from the fan from the PSU (POWER SUPPLY UNIT) So if you want and clever enough you can change the fan on the PSU or get a new PSU FROM any computer shop. Good luck all
I bought a Zoostorm from Argos . I sent it back the next day ,I could not put up with the noise it was like having a leaf blowing machine in the room. worst pc on the market